


the beams of our house are cedar, our rafters are pine

by shootingstarcas



Series: A new canon [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pre-Series, Stanford Era, human!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23408968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shootingstarcas/pseuds/shootingstarcas
Summary: Long-overdue prequel to "bloody, but unbowed". Dean meets Cas two years before the series starts, in a Gas-n-Sip in Rexford, Idaho.Sorry it took five years and a pandemic. Stay safe stay home everybody.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: A new canon [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/226298
Comments: 27
Kudos: 260





	the beams of our house are cedar, our rafters are pine

Castiel is fifteen minutes from the end of the night shift when the bell over the door rings. He blinks a few times to wake up—he’d been practicing the art of napping while standing—and looks over. The guy comes to the register with a six-pack of beer and a toothbrush.

“Lost mine,” he says with a grin, as Castiel swipes the toothbrush. He’s got a nice smile. He’s got a nice everything, actually, now that Castiel is looking at him. And still looking at him. Looking at him for probably longer than necessary, now, and the guy is smiling wider, and his eyes flick down to Castiel’s name tag and then back up to his face. “Hi. How’s it going.”

Castiel exhales and looks to the green numbers. “That’ll be $8.11,” he says. “Fine, I’m fine. Uh.”

“I like your name, it’s unusual,” he says, reaching into his back pocket for a wallet which is the same shade of brown as the leather jacket he’s wearing. “Castiel.”

He pronounces it right. Most people don’t. “I had unusual parents,” he mutters, taking the card and swiping it. The name comes up on the register, Elwood Blues. He laughs. “Speaking of unusual names. What, the guys from SNL met you and were inspired to start a band?”

The guy doesn’t miss a beat. “Something like that. Look, if the card doesn’t go through, I can pay in cash.”

“It’s through. Have a nice night, Elwood.”

He takes back the card. Castiel thinks maybe their hands will brush or whatever, some stupid trope that’ll make this seem like something extraordinary, as in beyond the ordinary, but obviously they don’t, and obviously it isn’t; they’re in a gas station in Rexford, Idaho, and nobody’s looking for anything. 

The guy laughs good-naturedly at Castiel’s tone of voice, pockets the card, and picks up his six-pack and his toothbrush. He says, “You too, Castiel,” and fucking _winks_ , and walks out of the store.

Castiel flinches at the bell over the door as it closes, blinks his eyes like he’s waking up all over again. What was that? He runs his knuckles over the edge of the counter, an old nervous habit of his, until his mind steadies and calms. He looks at the clock. He waits until it hits midnight, and nobody’s coming in. He closes up the store and walks home, to his cheap apartment, and he makes himself a cup of cheap decaf tea and tries to hold in his mind the sound of that laugh.

***

Obviously his name isn’t Elwood, Castiel knows that. He also knows that most men, statistically speaking, don’t like other men. He also knows that most people don’t come into the same gas station twice. Of course they have their regulars at the Gas-n-Sip: Linda who stops by for gas on her way to work, and Pete who buys his daughter a pink cookie after school on Fridays; the high schoolers from around the corner who come here to ditch assembly and buy gummy worms because that’s as far as their concept of coolness extends; various locals who literally can’t afford better coffee. Castiel knows most of them by face if not by name. But he’s never seen “Elwood” before, which means the statistical likelihood of seeing him again is pretty damn low.

Which is why Castiel is surprised when he comes back the very next day.

“Hey,” he says, walking in, walking right up to the register this time. “You’re working again.”

“That is how jobs work, you know,” Castiel says.

The guy laughs. God, and it’s the same nice laugh. “Are you always on the night shift?”

“Sundays through Thursdays, four to twelve.” Why is he telling this complete stranger the hours of his shifts? Castiel bites his tongue, literally, before he starts giving out his home address and phone number and social security card. Well, maybe his phone number wouldn’t hurt.

“You live around here?”

“Yeah, about a mile away. You?”

“Just passing through. Say, I was reading the newspaper this morning, saw something about some guy from Rexford getting killed while hiking last week. Did you hear about that?”

“Oh, yeah, I saw it. Didn’t know the guy, but I knew people who... It’s not a big town. Can I get you anything?”

He straightens up. “Right. Yeah I came in here to get a toothbrush.”

“A toothbrush.”

“Yeah.” He grins, ear to ear. “Lost mine already. Crazy how that happens.” No shame, no hesitation, just commits to the bit. Castiel likes him a lot for that.

“All right. You know where to find them, then.”

As the guy goes to find another toothbrush, he calls back, “So what do you think happened?”

“What, to the hiker? Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t think it was up for speculation. They’re saying a bear? It happens sometimes, usually you hear about the ones in Yellowstone because tourists will do anything to get their photos, but out here in these woods it gets dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” the guy repeats. “Hey, what color should I get?”

“What did you get last time?”

“Green.”

“Well, you lost that one, so I’d go with something else. Red.”

“No Sith colors. Jedi only.”

“You’re a fucking nerd, aren’t you.”

“I’m going with blue, then.” He brings it up to the register, proudly. Castiel rings it up and swipes the card. “Dangerous, huh.”

“Why are you wondering about it?”

He shakes his head, picks up the toothbrush. “Just thinking through a theory.”

“Are you going hiking?”

He laughs. “Might do.” 

“Well, stay safe. Don’t get eaten by a bear.”

“I’ll do my best,” he says, turning to leave.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Castiel asks, just for something to say. 

The guy turns back. “You know my name! Elwood.”

“Come on. What’s your name.”

His smile changes. He pauses, fidgets with the toothbrush. Looks back at Castiel. “Dean,” he says.

Castiel feels his shoulders relax, as something settles in his body. “Nice to meet you,” he says.

***

The third time Dean comes in he isn’t smiling. The store’s empty, and Castiel is asleep on his feet again, but instantly he senses wrongness in the air, this guy stumbling through the door, limping up to the counter, putting his weight on it with one hand, the other held to his shoulder.

“Hey,” Dean says, and he coughs. There’s dried blood at his temple and mud on his shirt.

“Holy shit,” Castiel says, “Dean, are you okay?”

“Can you,” Dean says, “get me a thing of rubbing alcohol.”

“I can’t go out from behind the counter,” Castiel says, dumbly, because it’s the rules, and under the circumstances he defaults to following the rules.

“Christ, do I look like I’m going to rob the register?” Dean asks, but he limps off, first to the toothbrushes aisle (again?) and then to first aid. He comes back with a tin of floss, some gauze, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Not knowing what to say, Castiel rings it up, takes the proffered five dollar bill, ignoring the smear of blood on Dean’s hand. That’s his own blood, right?

Castiel puts it all in a plastic bag and then looks up at the CCTV in the corner. “Let me help you out to your car,” he says. He tries to get Dean’s arm over his shoulders but Dean cries out and jerks away, cradling his shoulder. So Castiel just sort of puts a hand between his shoulderblades and walks him to the door, carries the plastic bag, holds the door, hovers at the driver’s side of what is actually a very cool black car that under other circumstances he might comment on.

“Did you fight off a bear?” he asks, and laughs, and tucks his hands under his armpits because it’s cold out tonight.

“Something like that.” Dean gets halfway into the driver’s seat. He takes the plastic bag. Finally he looks up and meets Castiel’s eyes. “Hey. Thanks. Don’t tell anyone about this.”

And there’s enough silence after that for Castiel to say something in response, but when he opens his mouth there are no words. After a few seconds Dean nods, assertive, like the closing of a business transaction, and then he swings his legs into the car and reaches for the door. Castiel steps back. Dean starts the engine. Castiel lurches forward and taps on the window. Dean rolls it down.

“Take care of yourself,” he says, and Dean says, “Sure, Castiel,” and that’s the end of the conversation.

***

Castiel spends the next couple of weeks trying to figure out what happened that night. But his information is a closed set and no new details come in, nothing in the newspapers, though he reads them, and he rereads the articles about the mauled hiker, and he can’t put it all together. He wonders if Dean is a Sith or a Jedi. He decides he probably has to be a Jedi. He rewatches the Star Wars movies. Then he moves on, and tries not to think about it anymore.

One day a few months later he comes on shift and his coworker says, “Hey, some guy was in here asking for you. Light brown hair, little taller than you, know who that could be?”

Castiel stops in his tracks. “Did he leave a name?”

“No. I said you’d be on later, but he said he had to keep driving. Sorry, I should have asked for more information.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything, but he’s distracted by it for another month.

***

Then it’s the night when everything starts. The bell above the door jingles a few minutes past ten, and there’s Dean, smiling when he sees Castiel behind the register. He walks up to the counter radiating good cheer, and good health for that matter, Castiel is happy to see.

“Hey, remember me?”

“Yeah,” Castiel says, “I do.”

“I was in the area,” Dean says, “I was thinking of you.”

“Oh,” Castiel says.

“It’s been a while,” Dean says. There’s a beat. For a moment they stare at each other, each panicking with the sudden realization that they don’t know each other at all, and neither can explain why Dean has come back or why Castiel had hoped he would. Castiel feels terribly uninteresting all of a sudden. He wants to ask Dean a lot of questions or do anything to keep him here, and looking at Castiel.

But then Dean seems to steel himself, because he says, “Listen, you get off at midnight, right? If I stick around for a couple hours, would you want to—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, though, because of all the things to have happen, this is what happens. One of the two other guys in the store pulls a gun on them and the other tells them to put their hands in the air and announces, “This is a robbery!”

Now, most petty criminals know better than to rob a Gas-n-Sip, because of the obvious CCTV, but even if they’re idiots they’re still dangerous idiots, and Castiel doesn’t like being afraid for his life. He and Dean simultaneously put their hands in the air, Dean turning to face the guys, and Castiel’s heart is now beating very fast for a much less fun reason than it was before.

“Cash register, one handed, slowly!” the guy with the gun barks out.

“Hang on, Castiel,” Dean says, and both robbers look at him like they didn’t expect him to speak. At least not that calmly, casually almost, like Dean’s telling a friend to wait while he looks for something in the store.

“Don’t try anything funny, pretty boy,” the guy with the gun says.

“Oh, please,” Dean says, and then he does something very quick and directed with his hands. When Castiel looks again, Dean is holding the guy’s gun in his left hand, and it’s pointed down to where the guy is laid out on the floor.

The other robber makes a motion as if to run or maybe to attack but before he can Dean is reaching his right hand to the small of his back and drawing another gun, clicking off the safety, pointing it at the robber’s head. “Don’t think about it,” he says. Castiel can only see his face in profile, but what he sees makes his heart just plain stop.

“Castiel,” Dean says. “That was your name, right? Now’s a good time to call the cops. Do you have zip-ties behind the counter?”

And Castiel, wordlessly, presses the police button, gets the zip-ties, and zip-ties the would-be robbers’ wrists to the grocery shelves. In fact the whole thing is unusually quick and non-violent. He almost can’t believe it happened at all, but there are the two men, curled up on the floor, staring at Dean like he’s from Mars.

As soon as they’re tied up, Dean sets the foreign gun on the counter and tucks the other back in his waistband. “Are you okay?” he asks, and he puts his hand on Castiel’s arm.

“Yeah, I think so,” Castiel says. “You, that was...”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Dean says, and Castiel thinks, later? but then he continues, “I’m gonna clear out before they get here. I’ll come back. Know anywhere around here where a guy can get a drink? You look like you could use it.”

They talk for a few minutes longer and then Dean “clears out”, and Castiel is left to meet the police car when it comes. He knows the officer, it’s a small town. The officer puts the two men in the car and then comes back in to watch the CCTV tape.

“Do you know that guy?”

“No,” Castiel says, and it’s probably not lying to an officer, looking at technicalities.

“You’re talking to him before they pull the gun.”

“Just friendly conversation.”

He can see Dean’s face on the tape, but only the back of his own head. Still, in the body language, there’s "friendly" and then there’s unbounded enthusiasm.

Watching it again from this angle it’s even more impressive, what Dean does, the speed of it, the practiced sureness of the maneuver, and Castiel sees how even as Dean reaches for the gun he puts himself between Castiel and the shooter.

“We’ll want this at the sheriff’s office for review.”

“No problem,” Castiel says, but remembering what Dean said all those months ago, after the cop leaves he deletes the tape. Then he closes the shop early, such that he’s just locking the door when Dean drives up.

***

They get drunk. Not so much that they don’t know what they’re doing, in fact, they get exactly drunk enough that they know what they’re doing, so that everything makes sense when Castiel says, “You probably shouldn’t drive tonight,” and then, “My apartment’s half a mile away.” On the way there Dean stops him and says, “Hang on, I’ve been in enough weird situations today that I just need to check that this is what I think it is,” and Castiel is expecting Dean to kiss him, but instead Dean does this weird little series of actions including pouring water and then salt over his hand, and although he doesn’t explain them, then he _does_ kiss Castiel, and then they kiss a lot, and then they walk home although they keep stopping to kiss, and Dean’s mouth is very warm and soft and Castiel puts his hands over his ears. When they get back to the apartment they undress each other very slowly Castiel never forgetting the gun at the small of Dean’s back which Dean leaves on a bedside table, and that’s what Castiel finds himself staring at, searching for a fixed point to ground himself, during what follows.

In the middle of the night he wakes up due to very soft pressure changes on the mattress, and finds Dean sitting up on the far side of the bed, the outline of his shoulders illuminated by an orange-yellow lamp. He seems to be doing up the laces on his boots.

Castiel feels a crater in his chest. It is like spiritual arousal and also disappointment. He rolls over onto his side facing Dean.

Dean turns and sees that he is awake. “Hey,” he says, very gently, and with that word alone Castiel hears the promise that this is not over, this is not accidental, and he instantly relaxes. “I’m leaving my number, I wrote it down, you can call me. I have to go now.” Then he cards his hand through Castiel’s hair and leans down to kiss him, shifts position on the mattress to kiss him more deeply. Castiel knows he will fall back asleep after Dean leaves.

“Okay, Dean,” he says. “Thanks for saving me last night.”

“Yeah, anytime sweetheart,” Dean says.

***

They text some. Dean is very brief in his replies, and every so often Castiel will get frustrated or maybe self-protective and back off, but for the most part it’s good, and straightforward. Dean starts typing Cas because it’s shorter, but later he starts saying that in person too. Once, and only once, Castiel calls him, on one of his nights off from the Gas-n-Sip, and Dean picks up and says he is in a motel room in North Carolina. Castiel has never been to North Carolina. He says so, tells Dean over the phone about growing up in a fundamentalist family in northern Idaho, the skinny part of the state where you never think anyone lives, the youngest of twelve siblings, only one of whom he talks to anymore. Dean sounds like he’s smiling when he talks over the phone. But that’s the only time they talk. Not on purpose, they just both forget to call again, or maybe they don’t want to jinx it, that one phone call was so good.

But a few weeks later Dean is “passing through” Rexford. It’s for some work thing, but he won’t say what, he won’t tell Castiel anything really about what he does, he’s cryptic over text when Castiel asks. Obviously there is still the bear-hiker event, and the robbery, plenty still to be explained; but Dean seems to want to pretend there is nothing to explain, and Castiel likes him, so he lets it be. Dean comes over for dinner. Castiel makes him food. The apartment is small but the kitchen table is well lit and they sit there for a long time after the plates are cleared, just talking. Dean sticks his feet against the table leg and tilts his chair back. He’s twenty-five he says, but he refuses to show Castiel his driver’s license. Castiel is only twenty-seven.

“How long have you been at the Gas-n-Sip?” Dean asks.

“Five years,” Castiel says. He doesn’t tell Dean that after he left home at seventeen he was angry, really angry, just about all the time, and he couldn’t keep the same job for more than a few months. That he likes it at the Gas-n-Sip because very little goes wrong there, and he gets to think, and look out the window, and talk to the same four people every day. Well, very little goes wrong there except when Dean is involved, it seems.

“Do you think you’ll do anything else?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel says. “I’d like to go to university someday. I want to take some religion classes and figure out what it is they weren’t teaching me.”

Dean finds this really funny. Before Castiel gets the chance to ask why, Dean pulls him out of his chair and takes him to bed.

Pretty soon it’s been two months since the attempted robbery, although it doesn’t feel like it with Castiel seeing him only once every few weeks. On one of the visits Dean stays a whole weekend which feels like an unbelievable luxury. They run out of things to talk about to the point where they watch TV, something totally irrelevant that neither of them picked, which is awesome. Dean goes around shirtless the whole time and Castiel cannot believe his luck. Dean has freckles on the backs of his shoulders.

***

Dean says he’s trying to take work in the surrounding states, and Castiel doesn’t know what that means except that he starts being around more often, staying more nights, and weirdly enough this is turning into some kind of relationship. They are still strangers to each other in some substantial way, but Castiel feels that maybe two people will always be strangers to each other.

One night they are talking about the other men (and women) they’ve been with. Dean is shy about it at first and then very talkative. There’s a full moon out, so even with the lights off there is this bright bluish color in the room, and Dean is on his back on the white sheets, staring at the ceiling, gesticulating with his hands, Castiel propped up beside him.

“My dad doesn’t—” Dean cuts himself off, making a strangled sort of noise, and looks sheepishly at Castiel. That is the first time Castiel has heard him mention any family. Once, at that first dinner maybe, Castiel tried to ask, but Dean shut him down pretty quick.

So Castiel knows to wait. When Dean doesn’t get a response, he pushes on. “My dad doesn’t like that I go around with guys,” he finishes. “He knows, or I mean I think he knows, but it’s not always clear with him when he doesn’t know something or when he’s pretending he doesn’t know as some kind of punishment.”

Castiel traces his fingers along Dean’s side and hopes Dean takes that as a gestural question mark.

“It’s not like it matters now,” Dean says, “now that I’m on my own most of the time. I don’t need him for anything, and no one—no one needs anything from me either. I can do what I like.” There’s a pause. “How old were you, your first time?”

“Well,” Castiel begins slowly, reluctant to draw the attention, but thinking maybe Dean is asking him to. Sometimes answering a question can be a way of helping someone out. “I think I knew when I was a kid that I liked men—boys, I suppose. In high school someone else figured it out and we tried stuff out in secret together for a few months. I didn’t tell my parents until after I knew I was leaving. That wasn’t why I left,” he adds, hastily, “but I didn’t exactly want them to know. Like what you said. As long as I still needed them, it wasn’t worth the risk.”

There’s a long pause, and then Dean starts talking again. This time it veers into something Castiel could not have imagined, which is the years when Dean and his brother—he had a brother? Castiel learns—didn’t have enough money to feed themselves, and their father would leave them for weeks on end, and Dean would try to get all kinds of jobs, at restaurants and auto shops and grocery stores and yes, even gas stations; and when that wouldn’t work, he’d stand outside the gas stations and wait for a certain kind of man to pull up and give him a certain kind of look, and then it was with those men that Dean learned how to do all the things he does very well in bed with Castiel, and that was how he made the money on which he and his brother survived their teenage years. When Castiel hears all this he feels disgusted, mostly with himself. He wants to get out of bed and change the sheets and stick his head out the window, but he fears if he got out of bed it would hurt Dean’s feelings. So he stays. They don’t talk much after that. Castiel kisses Dean all over his chest, and on his palms and wrists, and the sides of his face. It’s kind of a big deal, that night, and Dean doesn’t call him for three weeks after. But the next time they see each other everything is different and more intense.

***

For Dean’s twenty-sixth birthday, Castiel plans a dinner. Dean doesn’t like going out much, is mistrustful of public spaces other than bars, and the more Castiel learns about his childhood the more sympathetic to that he is. Besides, since Castiel works night shifts, it’s mostly mornings they spend together. Usually they go for walks in the nearby park. Once they went to a matinee showing of _Million Dollar Baby_ which everyone says is going to sweep the Oscars. And for Dean’s birthday—Castiel has taken the night off—they’re going out for dinner.

Dean had said he’d be in town by five, but that was three days ago, and Castiel hasn’t heard from him since. This happens sometimes and he tries not to think much of it, but because it’s a special occasion he can’t help getting antsy. Six comes, seven, the whole evening passes and Dean doesn’t show up. When it’s the next morning and Castiel still hasn’t heard anything, that’s when he starts to get angry.

He goes to work angry. He goes to bed angry. He knows he should be worried, like maybe something happened, but it feels more like Dean blew him off. Or maybe like he did something wrong, in planning a dinner, maybe he cursed it. He feels sure Dean would have liked it, if only he’d shown up. This was important, somehow; they’ve been seeing each other for nearly six months, and Castiel can’t even totally explain his anger at Dean missing this dinner to himself, but it’s there.

When Dean does finally show up, on the evening of January 28th, four days later, Castiel lets him in at the door and then goes back to making dinner without comment. Dean slumps down at the kitchen table. Castiel turns his back on him.

“Happy birthday,” he says, somewhat coldly and he knows it. Somewhat ironically, he adds, “Next time, let me know when you’re planning to ignore me for a week.”

Dean says nothing. Castiel stirs the pasta sauce. He waits for Dean to apologize.

“If you didn’t want to celebrate together, you could have said so instead of blowing me off,” Castiel continues. “I get it if you don’t like birthdays. You could have said. But I guess you don’t like to talk about your childhood much.”

He’s trying to get a rise out of Dean and he knows it—so far they haven’t fought over Dean’s reticence with personal details, but it’s only because Castiel hasn’t picked a fight, and now he’s thinking one’s long overdue. He turns to confront Dean and maybe try some yelling. Dean is crying at the kitchen table with his face in his hands.

Everything in Castiel comes to a halt, like a wave breaking earlier than you expect it to. “Holy shit,” he says. “Dean, Jesus Christ, I didn’t mean to—” He falls into the other chair. Rather than ask, _are you okay?_ he bites his tongue and looks. What he didn’t notice at the door is how pale Dean is, and he seems to have lost weight. Dean wipes his face with the sleeve of his shirt and then covers it again with his hands, no longer crying but not looking at Castiel either. He takes several deep breaths, Castiel watches the back of his ribcage expand on each inhale.

Something happened. Castiel should have known. The bear-hiker incident, long in the past though still unexplained and not forgotten, reminds him of what he should have held at the front of his mind all along: Dean’s work, whatever it is, is fucking dangerous. Castiel should have known it was something like this. Dean wouldn’t have blown him off on purpose. Now that he’s looking at this man, whom he loves, probably, it all feels very obvious; but anger is a tricky emotion, and it clouds judgment when it’s there. And anger is usually fear in disguise, Castiel reminds himself; this is something his therapist used to say to him, years ago.

“Hey,” Castiel says. “Let me take you to bed. Have you eaten dinner?”

“Nah,” Dean says, putting on that attitude of good cheer that Castiel has long since been able to recognize for its falsity. “Just give me a second, I’m okay. Sorry. I should have done this in the car.”

“It’s okay,” Castiel says, and rubs his back.

“I just wanted to see you as quickly as I could,” Dean says, and Jesus, Castiel feels like an ogre, like a cartoon villain.

“I shouldn’t have told you off. I wasn’t listening.”

“I should have—” Dean breaks off, and for a moment Castiel is afraid he’s going to start crying again (he doesn’t know what to do with Dean crying, that’s never happened before), but thankfully, Dean changes directions and gets up. “I can explain,” he says. “My dad,” he says. He sways on the spot. Castiel jumps up to grab his shoulder, before he falls over.

“Let me take you to bed,” Castiel says, more firmly this time. Dean complies.

Castiel is careful in helping Dean into bed, careful in lifting his shirts over his head and trading them for one of the clean pajama shirts Dean now keeps in the extra drawer. One time they were getting rowdy and Castiel pushed Dean down and Dean winced, and he found out from the soon-after-discovered bandages that Dean had a couple of broken ribs. Since then Castiel tries to be careful at least until he knows whether Dean is intact or not. This time he seems okay except for the paleness and thinness, like he’s lost blood, is what it looks like.

“I’m fine, Cas,” Dean says, but he eats the food he brings. Normally they don’t eat in the bed. “I’ve been a jerk. I knew you were looking forward to me coming this week.”

It’s true, they hadn’t seen each other in a while, and it’s true, Castiel was looking forward to doing something nice for Dean. Sometimes Castiel feels like he doesn’t do anything for Dean, anything useful that is; in the more melancholy, sentimental moments, he feels like Penelope waiting for Odysseus or something like that, like a useless housewife, or like in the Song of Songs, waiting for his beloved to return “leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.” He hates this feeling.

“I hate this feeling,” Castiel says. I wish you would tell me what you are, he doesn’t say. Sometimes he feels like the only thing he does for Dean is not ask questions. It’s because he doesn’t ask questions that Dean sticks around. Anything else would be unsustainable. That’s the impression Castiel gets.

Dean curls up on his side and hugs Castiel, who is still sitting up in bed. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to blow you off.”

“I figured that out,” Castiel says, putting a hand on his head. “It’s okay, I forgive you. You can tell me more about it in the morning if you want.”

Just before he falls asleep, Dean says, “I miss Sam.” His brother, Castiel remembers. It’s only the second time Dean’s said the name.

***

In the morning Dean does explain, or he tries to. “I got into a situation I couldn’t get out of on my own,” he says. “It took my dad a few days to realize, and come get me. And then he wanted to keep me with him until I was—”

“Better,” Castiel supplies. “Safe to drive without fainting.”

“Yeah, I know, it was dumb. I wanted to come straight to you but he doesn’t know about you and anyway we were in Texas. He took my phone and I didn’t have your number memorized which I’ll do now.”

“He? Your dad?”

“No, the—” Dean stops himself.

“The bad guy,” Castiel fills in, skeptically.

Dean looks at him, and then he laughs, that laugh that made Castiel like him the very first day, the laugh of being surprised. “Cas, you’re really great.”

Castiel waits.

“Okay, look.” Dean starts picking at a splinter in a whorl of the wood on the table. “There’s stuff I want to tell you. Have been wanting to tell you, for a while. I just gotta make sure you won’t run off when I do.”

Castiel waits.

“You don’t get it, Cas, how it’ll fuck our relatio—this, this thing we’re doing—how it’ll fuck us up, if I tell you and you don’t, you don’t believe me, or you do believe me and you want me to leave, hell, I’d want me to leave.”

Castiel can’t believe he actually has to say this. “Dean. Have you been paying attention the last six months?”

Dean looks up. “I—yeah,” he says.

“So, I trust you. And you trust me.”

“I know,” Dean says, and not off-handedly. He does know, and he’s saying that to Castiel, which just goes to show how deep their trust runs. “But Cas, there’s a lot I’ve left out.”

“I know what you do is dangerous, and partly illegal, and very secret. Since the beginning I’ve seen that you carry an unlicensed firearm, and you avoid the police. You have been doing it with your father since you were very young, and you have fought hard to protect him and your brother. I know you save lives. I know you investigate wrongful deaths.” He doesn’t say that he’s been keeping a folder for months now with newspaper clippings from all the towns and cities Dean’s mentioned visiting in the last three months.

“Okay,” Dean says, “yeah, that’s all pretty much right. But there’s a lot left out.”

Castiel gets up to make a pot of coffee. Dean starts to explain. Castiel forgets about the coffee and listens.

***

So now there’s everything to learn, and now that Dean knows Castiel won’t go running, he’s perfectly willing to talk: about monsters, ghosts, hunting, his father, his brother, all of it. He talks about the death of his mother which he’s only barely, _barely_ gestured towards before. He inventories the different things he’s encountered and the different things he does to fight them off. Castiel starts taking notes.

They spend the whole day at the kitchen table, talking, and when night falls they go to the bedroom and they keep talking. When Castiel asks about wards, Dean just laughs, and shows him the Devil’s Trap he drew under the doormat the literal first night he stayed over, and the other wards too, the protective charms tucked behind the dresser and stove. Dean was right, there was a lot left out, and Castiel is having trouble integrating it all. It is all so completely unlike anything he could have dreamed up.

Speaking of dreams, he learns what happened this week—a djinni. Strangely, Dean won’t talk about that part much. He explains that the djinni puts its victim in some kind of dream state, and that the only thing that kills it is a silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood; and then he changes the subject.

“I wish you could meet Sam, he’s the real brains of the outfit,” Dean says. “He could tell you all this better than I could. And Dad keeps a journal, which is good when you get into something obscure. I just try to remember what I can. Keeps me alive I guess.”

Castiel wishes he could meet Sam too, but only for the reason that Dean clearly loves him so much. A few months back Castiel introduced Dean to his sister, Hannah, who lives in Montana but was visiting one weekend when Dean was here. That had been good, really good, better even than Castiel could have imagined. In general it hasn’t occurred to him that he and Dean would meet each other’s friends—Castiel isn’t out to the general populace of Rexford, Idaho—and Dean has been so protective of information about his people anyway. But now Castiel realizes there are plenty of people to meet, not just Sam but someone named Bobby, and Pastor Jim, and Caleb, other “hunters,” as Dean calls them, a whole network of people living under the radar in America, doing this thing that nobody knows needs doing.

It is all kind of amazing. Castiel knew that Dean was a “good guy”—a blue lightsaber kind of guy—but this is of a scale he did not imagine. All the illegality, the gun, it seemed to suggest a darker side; and yes, Dean tries to convince Castiel that hunting is not all heroism, that he has made some grey decisions, but still. Castiel feels like his eyes have been blown open.

***

After that night, Castiel figures everything will be different. And it is, in some ways. But actually not that much. For Dean’s birthday, Castiel had planned to give him a key to the apartment; so now Dean comes and goes whenever he can, sometimes in the middle of the night. Castiel will be in bed and hear the sound of the key in the lock, footsteps down the hallway, will feel Dean’s weight on the mattress as he gets into bed. It’s like that: domestic. Now that Castiel knows about the hunting, the trust between them is secure like rope, like hands on arms, like a closed box.

And Dean stays more often, now. He reads the newspapers in the morning, which he always did, but now Castiel joins in and they look for hunts together. Sometimes Dean just takes a week off. It’s almost like he lives here now, keeps more of his stuff in the apartment than in the car. They talk about looking for a better apartment but Castiel makes shit money at the Gas-n-Sip and Dean barely gets by on credit card scams as it is, so that better apartment never materializes. But it’s good, what they have, and they’re happy. Dean keeps a few more weapons in the house than he used to, and he’s more forthcoming about where he’s going and what’s he’s going to do, and whatever anxieties or insecurities Castiel had for the first six months subside.

Plus it is springtime, which is the time for falling in love, which they do, aggressively, as if they hadn’t already. Dean is the first one to say “I love you,” which feels like a big deal. In June he takes Castiel out to South Dakota to meet Bobby. After the first few days’ wariness, they get along well, and Dean comes out to Bobby, which is another thing that feels like a big deal. Castiel isn’t there for that part but Dean tells him about it later.

Then there is the summer, where Dean teaches Castiel to shoot a gun, and brings him on a few simple hunts. At first Castiel is much like he was during that robbery at the Gas-n-Sip: skittish, a rule-follower, drops the iron poker the first time he sees a ghost. But steadily he strengthens in courage, especially once he starts to see that his courage saves others’ lives.

All of this is very strange and happens too fast.

At the same time, there are eight hour shifts at the Gas-n-Sip, and long, slow summer sunsets, and it feels like the longest period of his whole life. His childhood, his adolescence, the fights with his family, they feel like the memories of another person. Not him.

In October Dean suggests he try and meet John.

***

They arrange to combine forces for a hunt. Dean tells his dad he’s bringing a friend along, a hunter he’s been training, and if John finds it suspicious that Dean hadn’t mentioned it before, he doesn’t say anything, at least over the phone.

In person, Castiel’s first impression is that John is charismatic: a born leader, the kind of guy who can abuse his sons their whole life and they’ll forgive him and love him for it. Castiel hates this. But they shake hands and they hunt the nest of ghouls, all three of them, and Castiel is actually pretty helpful in the action and John gives him a look of respect after.

Then they are back at the motel, in Dean and Cas’s room (which has two beds for respectability), drinking and talking through the hunt.

“Did you see when I came in with the—?” Dean makes a stabbing motion.

“Yeah, son, that was well-timed,” John says, laughing.

“Reminded me of the werewolf in August,” Castiel says, “remember? When he had his hand up like this—” he raises a clawed hand “—and I thought I was done for, and you came in like that—?”

“Yeah, oh my God,” Dean says, laughing, because they can laugh about it now but it was about the scariest thing Castiel had ever experienced at the time, and they’d had quick, intense sex in the motel room afterwards, “it was exactly like that.”

There’s a beat of friendly silence, that turns less friendly as Castiel catches John’s eye. He looks from Dean back to Castiel. “About how long have you two been hunting together, then?”

Dean gets up to open another beer, though Castiel knows he performs the action to deflect significance. “Oh, since about midsummer.”

“We’ve known each other for a little longer than that, though,” Castiel supplies, thinking that will help explain their friendly rapport to John. It doesn’t. So he adds, “Dean came into my gas station after a hunt looking for medical supplies. That’s how we met.”

John looks at his son. “You mean you let some nobody in on the life because you were out of first aid? Dean.”

Castiel sees Dean’s shoulders tense, and then relax. It’s the kind of intentional calm Dean is so good at establishing, a kind of readiness, like when he was facing the gunman in the gas station. “C’mon, Dad, it wasn’t like that. And he’s not a nobody.”

John takes down his feet from where they were propped up on the bed. “What was it like, then?”

“I liked him, he was my friend,” Dean says, and for a moment he and Castiel lock eyes, remembering their first meetings; and then Dean looks away, and that’s how Castiel knows this is about to get bad. It’s not bad yet, but it’s about to get bad.

The conversation ramps up, until John and Dean are standing facing each other, Castiel still sitting in between them and off to the side a bit. John is shouting. Dean is shouting back. Castiel hears the word “fag”. He watches in a daze as they yell at each other, and then John smashes his beer bottle against the side of the table and raises the jagged edge, and Castiel leaps forward, knocking it out of his hand, so that it shatters into smaller pieces on the linoleum floor of the kitchenette.

“Jesus Christ, is he your defender? Is that what you need now, you little—” John finishes the sentence but Castiel doesn’t hear the slur, his ears just do this funny thing where they stop working. John shoves him out of the way and lunges at Dean, fists wild.

So Dean and John fight. Castiel tries to intervene but Dean shouts him off, saying this is his fight to fight. It’s pretty gruesome. When it becomes clear that Dean is not going to win, when John is whaling on him, Castiel can’t help himself, he pulls Dean’s spare pistol out from under the pillow and points it at John. John freezes when he hears it cock.

“Get the fuck out, now,” Castiel says. John spits on the ground, and goes.

***

“At least he didn’t spit on me,” Dean says, standing by the bathroom sink, tilting his head up to stop the nosebleed.

***

They stay home for a week after that, and then Dean goes out on a hunt. He says he doesn’t want company. Three weeks later he calls Castiel in the middle of the night. “Hey. I’m on this hunt and it’s getting pretty gnarly. I’ve been trying to call my dad and I’m not getting anything.”

“Well,” Castiel says, “I mean, have you talked to him since—”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve been texting about hunting stuff. Christ, Cas. I mean, I’m never gonna talk to the man again, but he still needs me professionally. But I haven’t heard from him in a few days and I think something’s wrong.”

“What do you know?”

“Well, he was on this hunt in Jericho—California—last I heard. I think maybe something happened to him. I want to go check it out but I want you to come as backup in case—”

“In case it’s something bad, yeah.”

“Or something to do with Yellow Eyes.” There’s a beat. “I didn’t tell you this because I thought it was nothing, just Dad going on his usual wild goose chases, but when we were hunting that ghoul’s nest he told me he was getting close to something big. I don’t know what it was. Cas,” he says, and it’s the way he says his name, pleading-like.

“Of course I’ll come,” Castiel says.

Jericho is pretty close to Stanford, where Sam is, but Castiel doesn’t mention it.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to return readers for your patience. Dear god what a wait. Let me know if there are typos, I haven't proofread.
> 
> Title comes from the Song of Songs, read it.


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